Disclaimer: We are not attorneys and don’t pretend to be. The information presented here relies primarily on information available through public records. We are not responsible for documentation from government entities and other public sources which may be incomplete and/or inaccurate.

Yes, it’s the silly season once again and as we always do prior to elections, we point out clear falsehoods and alleged violations of law by those running for office.

We encourage everyone to first read all the related ROE #11 articleswe recently published as it will start to put things in perspective for this article.

Regional Office of Education (ROE) #11 Candidate Micheal Smith made some interesting comments during his presentation to the Central A & M Community Unit District #21 School Board this week and it now appears he was less than honest with his claims.

At the 4:14 mark of the video Candidate Smith makes a clear statement of fact in his presentation. “To be completely honest there is lots of good reasons on there, there is ONE thing absolutely one thing that pushed me into this race…I was just mortified when I found out the ROE never contacted them…”

Anytime we find politicians preface their comments with “to be completely honest”, it sets off alarm bells with us, as we have seen so many times they say that in hopes of bolstering their comments, when in fact they may well not be true. In this case, we fact-checked his comments with the ROE and it turns out this Candidate’s claims are false.

ROE staffer Becky Parker was sent to Mattoon High School to help with student counseling. She has been trained by the National Organization for Victims Assistance (NOVA) in how to appropriately respond to school shootings.

Assistant Regional Superintendent Kyle Thompson reached out to Mattoon’s high school principal, counselor and several teachers expressing our empathy.

offered counseling services for any Mattoon students attending there

As you can see from the response from the Regional Superintendent of Schools, who is in charge of the Regional Office of Education (ROE), they did in fact reach out to the Mattoon School District, contrary to the false claim by the man seeking the office of Regional Superintendent of Schools.

Something that might be of interest to the voters is the very first qualification requirement in the law for the position he is seeking. “he is of good character”

We must ask, what kind of character does a person have when they stand before an entire School Board and tell them something that is not true?

Wow – was gonna ask what the timeline was on the ROE’s reaching out to MHS, etc., in the event there was a significant delay but none-the-less contact was made-but I watched Mr. Smith in the video and his statement was very clear, “…found out the ROE NEVER contacted them.” His assertion or claim is clear: ROE NEVER contacted Mattoon High School. That’s a pretty stark contrast to what was memorialized by ROE in response to your FOIA, on paper, and with names to boot. Once again, your reporting seems to confirm that he is severely lacking in the area of credibility and ethics.